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Jobs report shows 236000 more jobs, decrease in unemployment - Kansas City Star

Posted: 08 Mar 2013 09:15 AM PST

A surprisingly strong jobs report for February sparked renewed faith in the economic recovery despite looming federal spending cuts and the recent increase in payroll taxes and gasoline prices.

Unemployment fell to 7.7 percent last month, from 7.9 percent in January.

It was the lowest rate of joblessness since December 2008, when the financial crisis and recession first pushed unemployment above 7 percent.

February produced 236,000 more jobs than were lost, the report said, higher than many optimistic forecasts had expected.

Much of the increase came in key areas such as construction work, which posted its best hiring in six years in part thanks to a recovery in housing activity.

Employers also added to payrolls in health care, retail, and professional and business fields. The average reported work week grew longer in February and average wages rose.

Stock prices climbed higher on the news with the Dow Jones industrial average rising 48.66 points to 14,378.15. The Dow already had reach record highs this week.

Economist Scott Anderson at Bank of the West said the February jobs report showed the recovery accelerated despite the 2 percentage point increase in payroll taxes that took effect in January and the handwringing over federal spending cuts that began March 1 and are known as sequestration.

"Any way you slice it, it was a solid report on the improving health of the labor market at a time when concerns have increased regarding sequestration's impact on jobs," Anderson wrote in a in a first-look analysis of the U.S. Labor Department data.

The report was the government's first estimate of jobs growth in February. It revised downward its original report on job growth in January but raised is jobs count from earlier reports on December.

If the last three years offer any guide, revisions to the February report are likely to find more jobs than today's report showed.

For example, the Labor Department's revisions pushed November's job gains to 247,000 jobs, or 101,000 more than first reported.

Despite the upbeat report, some economists caution that the job market still has a long way to go.

Official unemployment totals fell partly because 130,000 more American's dropped out of the labor pool in February. And the long term unemployed did not gain ground in February.

The Federal Reserve likely will see no reason to let up on its efforts to boost the job market with its purchases of bonds and policy of holding key interest rates near zero.

"This is about half the rate (of jobs growth) we would require to absorb those unemployed in the Great Recession by the of the decade," said economist Michael Hicks of Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

Chávez Funeral Has Begun in Venezuela - New York Times

Posted: 08 Mar 2013 09:10 AM PST

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: March 8, 2013

CARACAS, Venezuela — Foreign dignitaries and Venezuelans continued their extended goodbye to Hugo Chávez on Friday as the government began a stately funeral that seemed designed to showcase Mr. Chávez's appeal to the powerless and the powerful.

Outside the military academy where Mr. Chávez lay in state, thousands of people stood in long lines with a mixture of weariness and giddiness: many had waited for as long as 24 hours and still were not close to entering the hall where they would have a chance to file past the president's body in its glass-covered coffin.

Inside the three-story white stucco academy, a solemn ceremony was being attended by government leaders from more than 50 countries.

As the dignitaries began to arrive Friday morning through a side entrance, to walk down a red carpet, the lines outside stopped moving. An announcement over a loudspeaker pleaded for patience.

The crowd outside cheered when Mr. Chávez's mother, Elena, arrived and she waved to them.

"I've been here since yesterday and to tell you the truth I don't feel tired," said Genesis Briceño, 22, an economics student, who had been waiting since early Thursday morning. "I want to see him."

Ms. Briceño was elated by a government announcement that Mr. Chávez's body would be embalmed and displayed "eternally" in a glass case in a new Museum of the Revolution.

"We will have him in there forever," she said. "We all will be able to see him."

The V.I.P. guest list included leftist Latin American presidents like Raúl Castro of Cuba, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who were among Mr. Chávez's closest allies.

Other leaders attending include President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, a fellow member of OPEC, whom Mr. Chávez reached out to as part of his aggressive campaign to counter United States influence in the region and around the world.

The United States, which was often on the receiving end of Mr. Chávez's anti-imperialist diatribes, despite being the principal buyer of Venezuelan oil, said that it would send a delegation of Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York, and former Representative William Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Mr. Chávez, 58, died on Tuesday after a battle with cancer. His body was taken from the military hospital where he died to the military academy on Wednesday. The lines formed then to file past the glass-covered coffin where the leader lay, wearing a red beret and a green military uniform.

Vice President Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Chávez's handpicked successor, said on Thursday that Mr. Chávez's body would remain on display for at least seven additional days before it was removed and embalmed for posterity.

Officials said that Mr. Maduro would be sworn in as interim president on Friday evening, although some in the political opposition said that the Constitution designates that the interim post should go to the head of the National Assembly, who is also a close Chávez ally.

Officials have said they will follow the constitutional requirement that new elections be held to replace Mr. Chávez. The Constitution says the nation should proceed to a new election within 30 days, but so far no timetable has been announced.

Mr. Maduro will run as the government candidate. His opponent is expected to be Henrique Capriles Radonski, an opposition leader.

Mr. Chávez used his country's vast oil wealth to carry out what he called a Bolivarian revolution, named after the indepence-era hero Simón Bolívar, based on Socialist principles and held together by his personal charisma. Venezuela has the world's largest estimated petroleum reserves and is the fourth-largest foreign oil supplier to the United States.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Jumaat, 8 Mac 2013